Aestheticizing Space

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Aestheticizing Space: Art, Gentrification and the City

Vanessa Mathews*Department of Geography, University of Toronto

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between art and gentrification at the urban scale. In particu-lar, it maps shifting conceptualizations of this relationship through a focus on art, artists and artsspaces in the successive waves of gentrification. The first half of the article outlines the conceptu-alization of the arts in the first and second waves of gentrification, beginning with artist locationpreferences, detailing how and why these areas become attractive for higher income groups, andthe agency prescribed to artists within the process. In the second half, the article places these find-

ings in conversation with current debates taking place in the field surrounding third wave gentrifi-cation, in particular, how the arts are incorporated into public-policy and urban regeneration witha focus on public art and arts infrastructure. The conclusion raises questions about how the incor-poration of the arts in city programming complicates understandings of gentrification, and presentsfuture avenues for research.

Introduction

What attracts artists to particular areas of the urban fabric? How does the arts community

alter urban spaces in material and immaterial ways? What meaning(s) and understanding(s)are attached to artists, their productions, and arts spaces, by whom, and for what ends?These are the questions which frame the basis of the literature on art and gentrificationin the city, and the questions which will direct the paper that follows. Nearly threedecades after Zukins (1982) seminal text Loft Livingwas published on the subject, empir-ical and theoretical contributions on the linkages between art and urban change continueto spark debate and interest. This article begins by outlining some of the main elementsof gentrification and providing definitions of key terms, after which the article is dividedinto two main sections. In the first section, I review the relationship between art andgentrification in the first and second waves of the process. In the second section, I exam-

ine how art is incorporated into third wave gentrification through a focus on public artand arts infrastructure. Research on the role of the arts in the process of gentrification hascontributed a great deal to debates on how, why, and where the process unfolds.Similarly, the expansive body of works produced on gentrification has contributed tounderstandings of how the art world is entrenched within cycles of urban change.

DEFINING THE TERMS

What is gentrification? What are the underlying causes of the process and what explainsits rather forceful (and uneven) parade into urban spaces? Following the coinage of the

term by sociologist Glass (1964) in her research on the working class quarters of London,debates over the nature of the process have continued unabated. In general, gentrificationis defined as a process of inner-city transition, where low property investment spurs a

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process of reinvestment and an accompanying shift in social demographics and built form.While issues surrounding the term are certainly present in the literature, the mostsubstantive debates emerge over identifying the underlying causes of the process and theassociated effects. Since the coinage of the term, analysis of the process developedthrough the fields of economic and cultural thought. While it is not my intention toextensively re-ink the divisions (analytical and discursive) that emerged from this earlyperiod, there is utility in outlining the terms of debate [see Lees et al. (2008) and Shaw(2008) for comprehensive discussions of these trends]. Separations between capital andculture as the key drivers of gentrification, as Cameron and Coaffee (2005) note,informed historic and contemporary conceptualizations of the role of the arts in theprocess.

Divisions between capital and culture as the key drivers of the process (most clearlypronounced in the 1970s and 1980s) led to a break between production-led andconsumption-led explanations producing a great deal of energy in the literature. Produc-tion-led approaches place importance on the cycle of disinvestment and investment in theproperty market. Smiths (1979, 1996) rent gap theory the difference between the

current and potential ground rent of a site and the discourse of the revanchist city(middle class revenge on the inner city) addresses the role of capital in urban propertycycles. These approaches are largely informed by Marxist urban analysis, which placesclass (specifically through the sphere of production), at the forefront. Consumption-ledapproaches on the contrary examine the preferences of consumers as initiating theprocess. These approaches are oriented around demand (specifically the preferences ofgentrifiers within the sphere of consumption) and are informed by liberal humanist analy-sis (see as examples Caulfield 1994; Ley 1996).

What was once a relatively debilitating separation between the two explanations characterized by Smith (1996) as initiating a vibrant, complicated, sometimes counterpro-

ductive set of arguments has progressed towards a useful understanding of the impor-tance of the two perspectives, and continued attempts at holding the two sides togetheras mutually constitutive elements (see Lees 1994, 2000; Ley, 1996, 2003; Shaw 2002).Specific to the role of art in the process, Zukins (1982, p. 17690) notion of an artisticmode of production represented an early attempt to correlate capital and culture by link-ing the real estate industry to the culture industry. The artistic mode of production repre-sents the use of culture by investors to attract capital in the built environment. Researchon the arts as a catalyst of urban change illustrates how the preference of consumers andthe realm of consumption are highly intertwined with economic shifts and production.

The rise of what is labeled post-recession, third wave, or positive gentrification has

produced a great deal of debate in the gentrification literature over the past decade.1

Hackworth and Smith (2001, p. 468) defined the decade of the 1990s as holding thefollowing characteristics: the expansion of gentrification into more remote areas; theparticipation of large scale developers early on in the process; the decline of activism andresistance surrounding the process; and greater state involvement. In the 2000s, gentrifica-tion has become increasingly state-led rather than developer-led, and is now characterizedas a global urban strategy which is highly linked with global capital circuits (Smith2006; see also Lees et al. 2008, p. 16393). As part of the changing role of the state inthe process, the creation of federally funded Business Improvement Associations work tore-package the image of space (often through the inclusion of the arts community) for

higher order consumption practices, fueling a process of social and economic upgrading(Slater 2004). The term gentrification itself has received a makeover of sorts, removedfrom a great number of policy and planning discourses, alongside the class relations and

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displacement issues that typically accompany the process. Instead, the preference for termssuch as renaissance, regeneration, and revitalization directs attention away from thecontested nature of urban revival (Lees 2003; Wyly and Hammel 2008). Mirroring trendswithin popular discourse and policy, there are growing claims that critical scholarship ongentrification emerging from the academic community is waning (Slater 2006, 2008;Smith 2006).2 This criticism is directed towards research that addresses the positiveeffects of gentrification on an existing set of residents (see Freeman 2006; Freeman andBraconi 2002). The argument here is that increasing property values are not necessarily acatalyst for displacement, and that the economic opportunities afforded by the processmay outweigh the negative aspects. Smith (1996, p. 39) argues that the term gentrifica-tion must be expanded to document a broader process underway towards the classremake of the central urban landscape (see also Smith 2006). I take up this latter positionin the review, to outline how art is used within a broader process of aestheticizing spaceto attract particular forms of capital and culture.

The incorporation of art into public policy as a catalyst in urban economic develop-ment is touted in cities from coast to coast. Floridas (2002) argument that creativity is

leading the new economy provides a dictum for policy and programming that includesthe arts for its ability to drive public consumption and naturalize capital investment (seeMarkusen 2006; Peck 2005 for useful critiques of the creative class). The art world isrelational, meaning that it is made up of a number of different positions and forces thatpreserve the structure (Becker 1982; Bourdieu 1993). Captured within this category areartists, art galleries, art dealers, arts services, educators, critics, and consumers. This articlefocuses on the role of art, artists, and art spaces in the process of gentrification. This focusis consistent with the literature. The term artist refers to an individual who professes askilled art and who produces creative works of aesthetic value (such as photographers,painters, dancers, and writers). Art galleries legitimate art works and, dependent on their

typology (experiential, commercial, international), they enter into the process of gentrifi-cation at different stages. Public art is used in this article to refer to street art and art inpublic spaces within the urban environment (see Hall 2007, p. 13767 for a discussionon alternative definitions).

Art, artists, and gentrification

Some of the earliest research linking the arts community with the process of gentrifica-tion emerged from the New York context, in particular from the Lower East Side, Trib-eca, and the SoHo neighborhoods (Cole 1987; Deutsche and Ryan 1984; Zukin 1982).

From these reflections, it was evident that the arts community was playing a vital role inthe process of gentrification, and that further empirical and theoretical analysis and debatewas necessary. The relationship between art, artists, and gentrification in the literature iscontextual, reflective of the agents and interests involved and the underlying conditions.In this first section, I review three elements, which map out the first and second wavesof gentrification (described below): (i) where artists locate; (ii) how artists change thelocations in which they reside and what attracts other users; and (iii) lastly, how theagency of artists in the process is constructed.

Hackworth and Smith (2001, p. 467) provide a timeline of the successive waves ofgentrification drawn in relation to New York: following investment by developers into

areas undergoing declining property rates wherein numerous buildings were bought atrecessed values and renovated through sweat equity (first wave), in the late 1970s and1980s, gentrification was anchored (second wave), entering into new neighborhoods

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and assisted by the arts community which served to smooth the flow of capital (see Ley1996, p. 199 for the Canadian ideal case for stage models). Ley (1996, p. 199) positionsartists and cultural professionals as first stage gentrifiers, the first to establish a presence inthe inner city who are then followed by successive stages of gentrifiers, a point I willreturn to below. While the stage model approach does not fit perfectly into every city orneighborhood undergoing gentrification (see Van Criekingen and Decroly 2003), theprocess finds application in this discussion in marking out how art becomes incorporatedin the process. Cameron and Coaffee (2005, p. 46) mark the first two stages of the modelin relation to the arts as a shift from the creation by artists of a milieu for the productionof art to the commodification and private consumption of this artistic milieu (emphasisoriginal). While the shift from production to consumption is certainly visible, capital andculture are mutually constitutive parts in the cycle.

WHERE ARTISTS LOCATE IN THE CITY

[I]f cities have been essential to artists, artists have been

essential to cities (Solnit 2000, p. 19).

The inner-city figures prominently into art milieus, providing convenience to the down-town, proximity to a consumer base, and institutional support (galleries, critics, educa-tors). Artists are attracted to marginal spaces of the downtown for their central location,social tolerance, aesthetic, and monetary appeal (Cole 1987; Deutsche and Ryan 1984;Lloyd 2002). Bain (2003) uses the term improvisational spaces to characterize the unor-dered quality of these areas and their openness to multiple usage. Artist locations are typi-cally described as edgy, run-down, and experimental. In rejecting contrived andoverly planned spaces, Ley (2003, p. 2534) observes that artists are attracted to authentic

spaces of the urban. In a series of interviews conducted by Ley (1996, p. 187201) withartists in Vancouver, authenticity emerges as a desired urban trait for its perceived open-ness. As one sculptor suggests Every artist is an anthropologist, unveiling culture. It helpsto get some distance on that culture in an environment which does not share all of itspresuppositions, an old area, socially diverse, including poverty groups (cited in Ley1996, p. 195). Similarly, as Cameron and Coaffee (2005, p. 40) explain,

What the artist values and valorizes ismore than the aesthetics of the old urban quarter. Thesociety and culture of a working-class neighbourhood, especially where this includes ethnicdiversity, attracts the artist as it repels the conventional middle classes.

Areas which house a high number of artists provide important networks for experimenta-tion and social interaction (unexpected and planned). In addition to the aesthetic andatmospheric elements that attract artists to particular urban spaces, artists are attracted to arange of building types, from derelict warehouse spaces to Victorian row houses.

Buildings which offer appropriate conditions for livework and performance space,based on generous space, lighting, high ceilings, and low rent are valued for their aesthet-ics and functionality for the arts community (Zukin 1982). Following the decline ofindustrial manufacturing and the rise of the service sector, a great number of vacant andunderused industrial spaces remain in the inner cities of North America and Europe. Theadaptive reuse of industrial architecture for artistic purposes (artistic production, consump-tion, and distribution) is well documented in the literature. For example, when artiststook up residence in the declining industrial district of SoHo, New York, they popular-ized the aesthetic of industrial chic. The mass-market popularity of industrial chic allowed




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a transference of the image value from industrial spaces to contemporary apartments andcondominiums which advertise loft living for middle class tastes (Zukin 1982). Conse-quently, the mass-market appeal of loft living is rarely affordable or popular amongstartists from whom this aesthetic was originally derived (Ley 2003). Older housing stockin the inner city is also considered to be an attractive location for some artists and galler-ies given the generous space, cheap rents, and aesthetic appeal (Ley 1996; Mathews 2008)(Figure 1).

The vulnerability of artists within the gentrification process, while tied to property val-ues and aesthetics, also extends into the realm of urban planning. Loft spaces are desiredby artists for their livework potential, but for the most part, industrial spaces are notzoned for residential or commercial purposes. This means that unless land uses for aparticular parcel or area of land are transferred or relaxed, artists are placed in a tenuousposition, risking eviction (see for example Bain 2006). These evictions resulting fromzoning were witnessed in earlier periods when the multiplying effects of the arts werenot understood. Zoning is increasingly relaxed in areas to promote artistic presence as away of regenerating derelict lands, a point I will return to in the third wave section.

Fig. 1. Gallery Gevik and Feheley Fine Arts in Yorkville, Toronto making use of older Victorian housing stock.




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HOW ARTISTS CHANGE A LOCATION AND WHAT ATTRACTS OTHER USERS

According to Ley (1996) artists work as a colonizing arm for the middle class, openingup new spaces of the inner city through the image and identity attached to their lifestyleand productions. Similarly, reference to the pioneer function of artists (Ley 1996; Smith1996) responds to the ability of this community to tame and naturalize the real estate

market (see Bondis 1991 critique of the frontier mythology in gentrification research).The ability for artists to alter space in symbolic and physical ways (including renovationsusing their own labor, a process labeled sweat equity) makes them an attractive ingredientin revival initiatives (Cole 1987; Ley 1996, 2003; Smith 1996; Zukin 1982, 1995).

Drawn to the milieu created by the arts community, and attracted to the propertyinvestment potential, a variety of users are attributed as successors in the process. As Ley(2003) documents,

Typically, social and cultural professional and pre-professionals are early successors to artists,including such cultural producers as intellectuals and students, journalists and other media work-ers, and educators, to be followed by professionals with greater economic capital such as lawyers

and medical practitioners, and finally by business people and capitalists.

This is not necessarily the exact succession that takes place in all cases of gentrification.While experiential art galleries, arts organizations, and small collectives may also be pres-ent in the early stages of the process, commercial art galleries often enter into art spaceswhen consumer demand is high (Cole 1987; Mathews 2008). In this way, commercial artgalleries often work as successors to artists, forcing rents to increase, and displacement tooccur. As Molotch and Treskon (2009, p. 519) suggest, while there is generally a level ofsympathy amongst commentators when artists enter into a space (see Ley 2003), there isless sympathy when art galleries enter into the cycle. Following the refashioning of space,artists are often driven out as those with greater purchasing power take possession of localcultural forms. This can result from rising rents as well as a shift in atmosphere.

In his work on Chicagos Wicker Park, Lloyd (2004, p. 346; 2006) outlines how artists(and cultural producers) have retained their presence within the area, becoming avatarsof urban consumption, wherein urban cosmopolitans (skilled service workers) flock tothe area for bohemian and offbeat fare and to consume authentic experiences and cul-tural offerings. Artist milieus readily become a minefield for creative labor, enablingartists to find economic stability through menial jobs (Zukin 1995). This produces a laborsource for creative and cultural industries which locate in close proximity to art spaces.As Lloyd (2004, p. 368) explains, capital interests associated with the production anddistribution of cultural commodities also benefitinsofar as the symbolic and material

resources of the local field enable artists to engage in creative work for deferred andhighly uncertain compensation. The attraction to art spaces is not limited to propertyinvestors and local retail and commercial venues who benefit from the buzz of the area,but includes a host of cultural intermediaries also termed a critical infrastructure whoserve to legitimate and mediate taste and lifestyle (Featherstone 1991; Zukin 1991). Theseactors range from writers and critics to service workers who direct the experience of con-sumption (Zukin 1991, p. 258).

CONSTRUCTING THE AGENCY OF ARTISTS

Whether artists fall victim to the process of gentrification or are active participants precip-itates a great deal of debate in the field. Artists are politicized for their displacement of




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lower income groups and romanticized for their willingness to live in run down partsof the city. According to Deutsche and Ryan (1984) artists were complicit in theprocess of gentrification in the Lower East Side, New York, placing their own needsabove those of the working class and the homeless, and rendering the latter invisibleunder aesthetic delight (compare Mele 1996; Smith 1996). These positions are highlyintertwined wherein artists may catalyze a process of displacement and then becomedisplaced themselves. The creation of coalition forces with the middle class also emergesas a way to defend art spaces against destruction and resident displacement (Zukin 1982).

Drawing on examples from major Canadian cities, Ley (2003) argues that blamingartists for cycles of capital is misplaced: monocausal explanations do not account for thesocietal valorization of the cultural competencies of the artist and the attraction to thisvalorization by populations with higher economic capital. Leys position is informed byBourdieu (1993) who is used by a number of gentrification scholars (Lloyd 2002; Zukin1982) to engage with the position of the arts within urban change and the urban econ-omy. Artists, according to Bourdieu (1993) are high in cultural capital and low ineconomic capital placing them in a position of domination within the dominant class.

This position is structured by two factors according to Zukin (1989, p. 204). First, cyclesof property investment combined with the marketability of responsible renewal meansthat cultural capital has become a necessary part of some types of economic capital expan-sion. Second, increasing numbers of producers and consumers of art (the democratizationof art), led to the realization that marketing forthem and marketing ofthem is economi-cally lucrative.

While some theorists have positioned artists as anti-capitalist rejecting market forcesand the commercialization of their productions and spaces of residence (Bain 2003; Ley2003; Zukin 1982), others note how some artists profit from the speculative developmentwhich in turn provides them with greater location choices (Cole 1987; Currier 2008).

Whether artists resist market forces or profit from them speaks to the unevenness of resis-tance to urban change, and their structural position within the economy. The agency andidentity of artists beyond economic measures (as walkers, producers, consumers, andactors) is underdeveloped in the literature, despite its influence in defining space (Math-ews 2008). As Bain (2003, p. 305) suggests

if artists are to be understood as anything other than urban pioneers and initiators of urbanrevitalization efforts, they need to be appreciated more fully in their own right, as a social groupwith a distinctive occupational identity and a heightened awareness of the availability, regulationand character of urban space.

The call for more nuanced understandings of the particularities of artists in urban spacewill proffer greater understanding of their role within processes of urban change.

The issue of artist displacement via gentrification is negligible for the real estate andtourism industries which are able to capitalize upon the memory of artists and thecommodity of the artist milieu (Bain 2003; Ley 2003; Mathews 2008). In other words,by the time that artists are displaced, the area is already branded as a safe, interesting (andprofitable) locale within the urban fabric. Meligrana and Skaburskis (2005) called for anextension of research in previously gentrified areas to develop understandings of the cycle.Further examples of the function of artistic memory in place following displacement ofarts production in a global context are encouraged in this regard. Similarly, research that

draws on the succession of art galleries in urban spaces would add to the understandingof the gentrification waves specific to the art world. For example, a recent article byMolotch and Treskon (2009) on the changing state of art in two New York districts




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(SoHo and Chelsea) offers evidence of a different cycle of transition in two art gallerydistricts. Rather than focusing on shifting property values to explain the changeover, theauthors examine the changing tastes for different kinds of art arguing that the economicvalue of the sector and its product are as relevant in art cycles as the real estate market.Comparative research in art markets in a national and international context would allowthis thesis to be tested.

Third wave gentrification and art

Writing about the conditions of urbanism in San Francisco, Solnit (2000, p. 13) suggeststhat Gentrification is just the fin above water. Below is the rest of the shark. The restof the shark refers to the emergence of a new economy which lay waste the citys exist-ing culture culture both in the sense of cultural diversity, as in ethnic cultures, and ofcreative activity, artistic and political (p. 18). There is widespread recognition by thestate, private investors, and corporate developers of the regenerative potential of the arts,drawn from the experiences of cities which underwent earlier waves of gentrification.

Specifically, there is marked evidence of how the arts prompted local property values torise, fashioned a place-image that spurred investment, and fostered a place identity thatcould be marketed within and beyond the local urban economy. Within the new econ-omy, art is one of the leading place-making devices, and renewal processes are a leadingforce in restructuring the urban. The arts sector is incorporated into policy strategies toenhance place image, build social cohesion (quality of life and livability), and to diversifythe economy.

Cameron and Coaffee (2005, p. 46) define the relationship between art and third wavegentrification as follows: The emphasis in the third phase, with the more explicit public-policy engagement and link to regeneration, is on the public consumption of art, through

public art and artistic events, and particularly through the creation of landmark physicalinfrastructure for the arts, such as galleries, museums and concert halls (emphasis origi-nal). Ultimately, the shift from the production of art to the public consumption of art haspromoted a more visible (yet proscribed) presence of the arts in the urban fabric. In thissection, I focus on instructive examples of arts-led regeneration and examine two dimen-sions of art in the city: public art and arts infrastructure.

PUBLIC ART AND ART IN PUBLIC

The incorporation of public art into regeneration strategies continues to rise as govern-

ment officials, developers, and private investors recognize the value in framing urbanchange through the aestheticization of space (see Harvey 1990; Jameson 1991). As Halland Robertson (2001) note, policies drafted in the United Kingdom by the end of the1980s were already incorporating public art into urban regeneration schemes. Public art isrecognized by city officials on the basis of its ability to contribute to community building,education, a sense of place, civic identity, social inclusion, and social change (Hall andRobertson 2001). Armed with a list of these potential contributions, art constitutes amajor component in a multifaceted strategy to alleviate the social ills characterizing con-temporary urban spaces, including declining population rates, high unemployment, dere-lict and underused lands and buildings, and a waning sense of place.

The form of public art which is promoted in official policies at the local and nationalscale is qualitatively different than the politicized messages inscribed during earlier gentri-fication cycles. The oft cited slogan Die Yuppie Scum expressed in graffiti, voiced in




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chants and posted on signs during anti-gentrification protests in the Lower East Side inthe 1980s falls outside of these strategies. Miles (1997) notes how the experience of art ismediated by two factors: how the artwork is framed in a location and what venue thework was created for. Displays of public art, while able to express multiple values, are attimes incorporated into renewal strategies to foster state control and the domination ofcapital over a population (Deutsche 1996; Miles 1997). This is often a product of theinstallation and selection process as raised by several researchers (Bailey et al 2004; Sharpet al 2005) which can lead to homogenization and exclusion. Percent for art legislation isactive in cities across North America and Europe to promote publicly accessible art workstied to development (Hall and Robertson 2001). The programs work by ensuring that acertain percentage of the budget for new developments is earmarked for public art(Figure 2). These legislations have proved highly successful in adding aesthetic interestand spurring economic regeneration, although there are still issues surrounding inclusionand exclusion and their relationship to (the identity and meanings of) place.

While public art can sustain dominant values and interests, it also has the potential tochallenge the dominant order of space, place, and time (Hubbard et al 2003; Jacobs

1998). For example, Somdahl-Sands (2008) writes about how Mission Wall Dance, a site

Fig. 2. Located in the Distillery District, Toronto, Koilos by California-based artist, Michael Christian is an exampleof public art which is tied to development. The Distillery is an example of arts-led redevelopment.




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specific performance piece in the Mission District, San Francisco, engaged with notionsof civic identity by politicizing the effects of gentrification in the neighborhood. Giventhat the setting and context of art conditions and frames its meaning, it is necessary toquestion why works are created and for whose interests. On the flipside, in the case ofthe (now) iconic sculpture by Anthony Gormley Angel of the North located near Gates-head, the piece was meant to evoke a shift in the image of the region from a post-indus-trial to a cultural landscape. As Sharp et al (2005, p. 1014) note, In claiming to be asignifier for the city as a whole, of course, it hides the inclusions and exclusions inherentin any singular vision for a community.

An area which has received little attention in the literature (beyond passing mention) isthe role of urban arts festivals in regeneration strategies. Quinn (2005) outlines how artsfestivals need to be conceptualized beyond their ability to generate income and to fixthe image of place. Understanding the social value of festivals can promote dialoguewithin the community, but only if programming is able to move past the notion thatresidents are spectators, and acknowledge the multiple realities and conflicting meaningsthat can be hidden beneath their image conscious stage-managed veneers (Quinn

2005, p. 940). Arts festivals are increasingly global in orientation, witnessed in the expan-sion of Nuit Blanche, an all night arts festival, which began in 1997 and is now held incities from Montreal to Lima. While these events can work to showcase the diverse arrayof arts activities in a city, the selection process can singularize the public consumption ofart, and mediate public experience.

Local particularities must be drawn upon to avoid the potential homogenization thatcan arise through cultural import and to stress the potential of art to express and evokemultiple meanings. Similarly, local populations need to be involved in the selection pro-cess and the selection must be tied to place to thwart feelings of exclusion. The visibilityof public art and art in public in the city when drawn into regeneration strategies is often

smoothed of contestation and served up for aesthetic delight.

ARTS INFRASTRUCTURE

Arts-led regeneration often includes investment in cultural flagships museums, galleries,precincts to harness public consumption. There is an expansive base of research whichattempts to work through the nature of these large-scale investments, their ability to re-im-age place, and their effects on existing residents. These efforts to attract inward investmentrespond to the need to restructure markets once dependent on industry and manufacturingtrade. Competition between places for economic enterprise has resulted in the need to sell

the image of a particular location to tourists and residents (Philo and Kearns 1993). Whileinter-urban and intra-urban competition should draw out more variegated spaces withinthe increasing homogeneity of international exchange, instead there is a regressive patternwhere place identity draws on previous molds (Harvey 1990, p. 295; see also Boyer 1988).As Gomez (1998) suggests, competition for improved status often results in imitationdespite the difficulty in transferring polices and experiences from one place to another.

A number of scholars have drawn upon the transition of Bilbao, from an industrial to apost-industrial centre, as an instructive example of regeneration through arts infrastruc-ture. The transformation pivoted around the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, a FrankGehry creation opened in 1997 which aimed to symbolize a new image and representa-

tion of the region. The Guggenheim art museum is a global chain, with offshoots in suchcities as Milan, New York, and Abu Dhabi. In the case of Bilbao, the relationship toplace was fractured under the global stamp, noted by the lack of acquisitions of local or




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regional artists made within the first three years following its opening (Evans 2003). Thesuccess of the site is negotiable, with some criticizing the regeneration strategy for its lackof employment creation (Gomez 1998) and others stressing the multiplying effects thatmay not be immediately visible (Plaza 1999). Plaza (2008) recently offered a set of criteriafor evaluating the effectiveness of these forms of cultural heritage, applicable also to theTate brand, a national line of British museums (now housed in four locations). Theseinclude the impact of the regeneration site on the tourist trade, dependency on the cul-tural heritage within the economy as a whole, the level of market integration, and thecitys overall economy. The inclusion of star architects such as Gehry in cities around theworld to boost tourism and re-image place is now a common feature of renaissance orregeneration planning (see Figures 3 and 4).

In his work on Los Angeles, Molotch (1996, p. 225) notes that Art counts for farmore than the volume of salesor the urban renewal a museum may stimulate; it isdeeply embedded within everyday life where it crafts moments of play and packagesand repackages dominant established viewpoints. Investments into arts infrastructure canbe unstable as a number of researchers have pointed out. As Evans (2003, p. 433)

explains:

City location alone is not sufficient to generate interest symbolic association is needed toovercome the arbitrariness of the new and novel architecture, as well as inherited cultural facili-ties. Where memory or the sense of a place is effectively absentmassive capital investmentand revenue is likely to be required and success still cannot be guaranteed.

Similarly, drawing on the cultural quarter of Hoxton, London, Pratt (2009, 1057) illus-trates how creating a place image through marketing is not a long term practice, espe-cially when that development is rooted in consumption. Drawing from research fromthe state capitals of Australia, Atkinson and Easthope (2009, p. 71) outline how selection

processes often find in favour of large arts infrastructure or commercially oriented artsprojects, such as key exhibitions and festivals.

Floridas (2002) marketing campaign that creativity is a necessary component in eco-nomic growth and development poses a challenge to the contemporary link between art

Fig. 3. The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto was recently transformed under the direction of Frank Gehry.




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and the city. Beyond crafting a set of conditions that will attract businesses and residents,the emphasis on creativity devalues the political, social, and cultural potential of the arts.Specifically it values creative types based on their ability to attract and retain skilledservice workers. Artists need to be disaggregated from an occupational classification thatplaces them alongside engineers (Markusen 2006), and the term creativity needs to be

appropriated, and placed within research (and policy) which allows for contested mean-ings and expression outside of the dominant class. As Catungal et al. (2009) argue in rela-tion to the creative city script being employed in Liberty Village, Toronto, the emphasisis on public consumption (tourism, experience) over cultural production, leading to issuessurrounding displacement and place-making.

Urban redevelopment strategies which pivot around art and culture are increasinglypopular in the urban policy toolkit. Festive redevelopments, drawn from the template ofthe development strategy of Bostons Faneuil Hall Marketplace, are one such example. InNorth America, these include South Street Seaport in New York, Harbor Place in Balti-more, Fishermans Wharf in San Francisco, Granville Island in Vancouver, Ottawas

Byward Market, and Torontos Distillery District. These spaces generally deployrestorative efforts to retain historical built form, carry an atmosphere of conspicuous con-sumption through independents, are typically housed on historical waterways, and claimuniqueness despite their relation to one another (see Hannigan 1998). The rise of themedretail environments predicated on the arts illustrates the reliance on the public consump-tion of art for capital accumulation. There are a number of risks in these strategies, asMiles (2005, p. 890) suggests, wherein place histories are often erased and replaced withaesthetic gloss, and the potential for gentrification to arise is present, a shift from multi-ple to single occupancy and from rent to owner-occupation of housing being a keyaspect of this and a marginalization (or peripheralization) of dwellers who become

constituted as a residual public.Degen et al. (2008) recently argued that the relationship between urban design in thebuilt environment and visual experience must be expanded to better understand the

Fig. 4. The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, a recent addition to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, was con-structed under lead architect Daniel Libeskind, and represents one of a number of projects underway in the Cityscultural renaissance.




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experience of designed spaces, and to allow multimodal ways of seeing and more activemodes of participation (and encounter). Further work in this area will provide a vehiclefor measuring the effect of designed spaces and visual culture (arising from renaissanceand regeneration programming) on a local populace.

ConclusionThe relationship between art and gentrification in the city has altered over time giventhe underlying political, economic, cultural, and social forces at play. Over the pastcouple of decades, the arts have been placed in a position of privilege by city officials,development agencies, and private investors for their ability to catalyze and naturalizereinvestment in declining or underdeveloped areas of the inner city. This has resulted inthe stimulation of gentrification to accelerate growth and development and to mitigatethe effects. Stimulating gentrification for these ends has meant severing the ties to theoft-cited dirty language of displacement and class relations that accompany the process.The inclusion of the arts as a seedbed for gentrification has led to the rise of controlled

and contrived spaces designed around the public consumption of art, artists, and artspaces. Flagship architecture, cultural quarters, festivals, and public art displays are used topromote a livable and beautified urban core, aspects that are highly valued in attractingthe middle and upper-middle classes. Under this spatial restructuring for mobile tastes,the arts are valued for their ability to smooth the flow of capital (Hackworth & Smith2001). But if the arts are to remain a part of the urban fabric, it is necessary to value theirrole beyond economic fodder. As Evans (2003, p. 417) evocatively notes, Hard brandingthe city through cultural flagships and festivals has created a form of karaoke architecturewhere it is not important how well you can sing but that you do it with verve andgusto.

How artists negotiate the city for livework space is an important part of understandingthe re-imaging of space through art. Their attraction to particular areas of the city, theirdifferential needs within these spaces, and the ways in which these areas become attractiveto other users with greater purchasing power, offer insight into the familiar cycle ofdisplacement. Artists are constructed in a number of ways in gentrification research: asvictims and aggressors; as vital in the (re)construction of place identity; and as usefulintermediary tenants in catalyzing change in underused or vacant spaces in the urban fab-ric. The utilization of the arts to naturalize change and attract investment, draws in artistsas bridge gentrifiers where they receive little protection against displacement (Zukin1995, p. 111).

In arts-led regeneration programming, artists are often offered space, a process whichAtkinson and Easthope (2009, p. 71) suggest is based on a tacit understanding of theways in which encouraging artists provides a seedbed for a kind of staged gentrification.The valuation of artists as pioneer or first stage gentrifiers limits creative expression aswell as their location choices. On the latter, artists continue to be priced out of thedowntown corridor under fluctuating real estate prices (Bain 2003; Cole 1987; Ley 2003;Williams et al. 1993) and residences are set up as temporary and tokenistic devices tolegitimate investment. The cycle of art galleries in the process of gentrification, whileanalyzed in several places (Mathews 2008; Molotch and Treskon 2009; Zukin 1982),requires further analysis and comparative studies. In addition, future research on the role

of the arts in state-led gentrification in cities across the globe is needed to build under-standing of the shifting terrain of the process as a global strategy, and the place of artwithin this expanded field. As Harris (2005, p. 38) argues, this means shifting attention




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away from New York as the preeminent centre (where it holds paradigmatic status) forresearch on art and urban change.

If, as Solnit (2000) and Smith (1996) suggest, gentrification is simply the most visibleelement in a complex makeover of the urban landscape, it is vital to continue criticalresearch on the links between art and urban change. Art has emerged as an importantelement in the urban economy, a tool through which to build and expand the image andrepresentation of place using a neoliberal urban agenda. It is critical that future researchexplores the art world beyond its economic measures, and that pressure is placed on ensur-ing that the incorporation of art in the urban provides an opportunity for local (and con-tested) meaning production and expression (surrounding where art is placed, how it isselected and by whom, and what meanings are attached to the works and their producers).

Short Biography

Vanessa Mathews is a cultural, urban geographer with research interests in processes ofurban change, visual culture, and critical theory. She is currently a PhD Candidate in the

Department of Geography at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation draws on theDistillery District, an arts-led redevelopment in Toronto, to examine strategies and tacticsof place differentiation and their effects on art, history, and space. She received an MA inGeography at York University, Toronto and a BA in Geography at Queens University,Kingston, Ontario. Her work has appeared in Urban Studies, Progressive Planning, and Social& Cultural Geography.

Notes

* Correspondence address: V. Mathews, Department of Geography, University of Toronto, St. George Campus,

100 St. George Street, Room 5047, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3G3. E-mail: [email protected] For example, Lees and Ley (2008) edited a special issue of Urban Studies dedicated to the theme of policy andgentrification (Volume 45(12)). In addition, Lees et al. (2008) examine these debates at length in their recent text-book, Gentrification.2 See also Butler and Hamnetts (2009) response to Slater (2006, 2008).

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